Notes and Editorial Reviews

"The Moscow Capella, founded in 1991 by Gennady Dmitriak, became affiliated with the Kremlin Museum in 1994. Renamed the Moscow Kremlin Choir, it has undertaken the task of reviving a Russian choral tradition that was suppressed, but, remarkably, never lost, despite the best (or worst?) efforts of the Soviet era. Delos's survey of Russian Christmas music includes music from the distant past (Vasily Titov, 1650-1710) to the present (Alexei Larin, born 1954); composers well known (Sergei Rachmaninov), moderately familiar (Dmitri Brotnyansky, 1751-1825, and Alexander Kastalsky, 1856-1926), and obscure (StepánRead more Degtyariov, 1766-1813, and V. Zinoviev, no dates, no first name). As I hinted above, to call this program "exotic" is probably to overstate the case. Dmitriak takes us a bit off the beaten path—far enough to be intriguing but not so far as to be disorienting. The biggest surprise, in fact, comes in the most recent work, Larin's Christmas Carols, which is described as a cantata but acts more like a medley of Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian folk songs until a very familiar tune by the non-Russian Franz Grüber suddenly fills the air."